“What if my partner gets tired of this and leaves….or who will want to be with me?”

“I’m broken/damaged.”

“No one understands.”

“I’m alone”

If so, you are NOT ALONE!

EVERY woman I’ve worked with who struggles with pelvic pain, also struggles with worry, self-criticism or doubt, catastrophizing, and obsessing about their symptoms.

Even if they know that it is making their pain worse!
Even if they’ve tried to think more positively.
Even if they are aware that thoughts about their symptoms are taking over their life.

Nothing triggers stressful, fearful thinking like chronic pain.

Especially pain that is taking over your life, that you don’t feel comfortable telling most people about, and that you haven’t found any effective solutions for – even after trying everything you can think of.

I know, I’ve been there.

And every one of my clients has been there as well.

And because of this I also know that even though it FEELS impossible to stop thinking this way, it’s NOT IMPOSSIBLE. It is VERY DOABLE when you have the right tools and an effective strategy to help you do it.

How to Overcome Obsessive Fearful (Lizard) Thinking so you can relieve your pain and reclaim your life!

After decades of successfully working with my own lizard thoughts and helping 100s of women overcome theirs, I have identified 5 key concepts that women who overcome stressful lizard thinking understand and embrace. Here they are…

1) You are not your thoughts.

You are not your thoughts. YOU are a mind-body-emotion-soul being. You have a source of wisdom inside you that is much deeper, wiser, and more reliable than any lizard thought. Accessing that inner wisdom will not only help you experience yourself as more than your thoughts, but also help you see that scary obsessive lizard thinking is NOT TRUE!

2) Your lizard brain is not bad.

Your “lizard brain” is not being bad, and it’s not trying to hurt you. It’s trying to protect you. It’s just 100% incapable of doing that. The good news is that your mind is an amazing, highly sophisticated tool, and your lizard brain is one tiny part of it.
You can learn how to access more evolved parts of your brain, and use your mind in ways that calm your nervous system and help your body heal.

3) You have a choice (even if it doesn’t feel like it).

While it is completely normal to feel powerless over your thinking, you are not powerless.
You have the power to choose your thoughts. You are the leader, not the other way around. You just need to learn how to start flexing your leadership muscle.

4) Writing is your friend.

The most powerful tools you have at your disposal when it comes to shifting lizard thinking are a paper and pen.

Writing down the scary obsessive lizard thoughts while they are going through your mind gets them out of your head and onto paper where you have much more power to question them, and make decisions about how you want to use your mind.

5) Pushing the thoughts out of your mind WILL NOT WORK.

Pushing negative thoughts out of your mind, trying to “make” yourself stop thinking them, is NOT an effective strategy. Even if you can get your attention off the thought, it does nothing to change the underlying pattern that is activating the stress response in your body.

Effectively changing your thinking begins with turning up the volume on your lizard thoughts, not turning it down.

To learn more about how to overcome stressful obsessive thinking, including step by step processes to help you get started, check out my popular blog posts:

Did you know that X-rays of people who are pain free, can show many of the same abnormalities that are identified as causing pain in chronic pain patients?

How can that be? Why would tense muscles, slipped discs, pinched nerves, or misalignment cause one person pain and not another?

​​​​​​​If the physical issue is responsible for the pain, shouldn’t every person who has that issue also have pain?

On the other hand, have you ever heard of phantom limb pain – severe pain that an amputee can feel in a limb that they no longer have? Clearly if pain only came from the body this pain wouldn’t exist.

So, where does it come from?

It comes from the brain.

Research in pain neuroscience shows that ALL pain is created in the brain, and that it may or may not be connected to what is happening in your body.

This DOES NOT mean that your pain is “all in your head”, in the dismissive way a medical provider who meant something like “drink some wine and deal with it” might say it.

(And yes, I have had clients whose doctor said exactly that to them.)

The physical pain is real. And at the same time, it is created in the brain.

What does this mean?

It means that if you are focusing all your energy on trying to find or fix something wrong in your body it may very well be a dead end.

There may NOT be something wrong with your body. Or even if there is, it may not be what’s causing the pain.

Your very real physical pain (regardless of whether there is an issue in your body or not) IS coming from your brain, and addressing that is an important part of relieving it.

How do you do that?

First by understanding why your brain creates pain.

Pain serves a protective function. Basically, your brain creates pain based on how much danger it thinks you are in.

This is not a conscious process, and it is based on many factors – like past experiences, current life experiences, past trauma, thoughts, and emotions.

For instance if your brain thinks that your emotions or sexual energy, or your job, or relationships are a threat to you in some way, it will create pain to protect you.

Now this does not mean that these things are ACTUALLY a threat (they may or may not be), or that the pain is ACTUALLY keeping you safe and protected – in some ways it may be, but in many ways it’s probably interfering with everything in your life! It just means that for some reason your brain is perceiving danger, and this could be based on very old experiences that are no longer relevant.

The good news is that all of this is reversible.

You can teach your brain that you are safe now – that your emotions are safe to feel, that it’s safe to be present in your body, that your sexual energy is safe.

And you can also make the changes in yourself (ie. your thinking) and your life that actually do create safety so that your brain can relax and stop creating pain.

It makes me so angry to talk with women who’ve gone through highly invasive procedures, like surgery, and who are still in pain. They didn’t know that there could be other reasons for the pain before taking drastic measures, and now they are still suffering, in some cases more.

Address the mind body component of your pain first!

It’s completely non-invasive and there are no side effects….other than deeper connection to yourself, and a sense of feeling safe and at home inside your own skin.

It’s not a quick fix, but if there were a quick fix you’d have used it by now. And I can tell you from personal experience, that addressing the mind body components of your pain is a journey worth going on ten times over.

It is a path to lasting relief.

I invite you to explore it more.

If you’d like more guidance and support transforming those underlying patterns and relieving pelvic pain, check out The Healing Female Pain program! In it I’ll walk you through the exact steps I use with my private clients to help them relieve chronic pelvic and sexual pain using a mind body approach.

In honor of pelvic pain awareness month, I want to bring more awareness to the connection between emotions and pelvic pain, especially for women.

Because in my experience, both personally and with the women I work with, emotions are almost always at the root of pelvic pain.

If they are not entirely responsible for the symptoms, they are contributing to them, or making it impossible to relieve them! And just to be clear, that does not mean pelvic pain is in any way your fault. It’s not, and you’re not doing anything wrong.

Here’s the deal.

We live in a culture that encourages us to suppress our emotions from day one. Our families, schools, religions…you name it. They are all set up to punish our expression of emotion and reward suppression.

And this is particularly true for women.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Don’t be so difficult.

You’re too emotional.

She’s such a bitch.

Smile.

Why can’t you just be happy?

We’ve all experienced this in one way or another, as children or adults. If we aren’t directly shamed or punished for expressing emotions, we’ve certainly been rewarded for not showing them.

After all, little girls are supposed to be “sugar and spice and everything nice,” right?

Umm. Wrong.

The truth is that we have emotions and we have them for good reasons, but our brains learn early on that it’s a lot safer for us if we don’t feel them.

As a result, we learn unhealthy strategies of dealing with our emotions. For instance, we unconsciously tense and contract the deeper muscles in our body, and we hold our breath so we can’t feel emotional energy. Or we keep ourselves distracted with activities like spending hours on the internet, binge watching our favorite shows, overeating, and massive To Do lists – all to help us avoid being present with emotional sensations in our body.

There are lots of problems with this, but the main one is that it’s impossible to relax muscles that are contracting 24/7 to protect you from feeling your emotions.

Depending on where the muscles that you’re contracting are, you can end up with….migraines and headaches, back or neck pain, hip or knee pain, or pelvic pain, including vulvar pain and burning.

If you’re suffering with pelvic pain, or you’ve been diagnosed with pelvic floor dysfunction, it’s very likely that one of the ways you’re unconsciously suppressing emotions is with chronic contraction of the muscles in your pelvic floor.

Chronically contracted pelvic floor muscles cut off circulation of blood, nutrients, and oxygen to the skin and nerves in the pelvis. This can not only lead to pain, burning, or inflammation, but also issues with sexual desire, arousal and orgasm. It can also contribute to chronic yeast or bladder infections, issues with elimination and urination, and difficulty during birth.

When your pelvic floor muscles are chronically contracted to suppress emotional energy, no amount of stretching, massage, visualization, physical therapy, medication, or other treatments will permanently relax them. To do that you’ve got to learn how to welcome emotions in your body…so the muscles don’t tense up in the first place.

Are your emotions impacting your symptoms?

One way to determine if there is a connection between the way you’re processing emotions and your pelvic pain symptoms, is to start noticing what happens to your pelvic floor muscles when you feel stressed, anxious, angry or afraid.

If your pelvic floor muscles tense when you’re in a stressful situation – or when you feel overwhelmed, angry, sad, or fearful – it’s a good indication that the way you’re unconsciously processing emotion is impacting your pelvic floor and contributing to your symptoms.

Or, if you can’t tell if your pelvic floor muscles are contracting or not, because you can’t feel them, that’s also an indication that there may be an emotional root to your pain.

If your emotions are impacting your pelvic floor, lasting relief will only come when you learn new ways of welcoming and processing your emotions.

You need to re-train your brain that your emotions are safe to feel.

The good news is that that is very doable.

Start by paying closer attention to your body.

Which of your muscles regularly feel tense? Which ones feel relaxed? What happens in your body, and your pelvic floor when you are under stress – emotional or otherwise?

In honor of pelvic pain awareness month, I invite you to begin becoming more aware of yourself and your emotions. It’s completely non-invasive and the side-effects are all positive!

Reclaiming your emotions will not only allow you to relieve your pain, it will impact your life in many other wonderful ways!

If you’d like guidance and support welcoming your emotions and re-training your brain, I’ll be going in depth into those topics in the Healing Female Pain program. Our next session begins this summer!

Have you ever promised yourself that you were going to cut out sugar, wheat, or dairy only to find yourself hours later with a blueberry muffin and a mocha latte?

Or, maybe you can’t stop obsessing about your symptoms, or money, or being alone – especially when you lay down to go to sleep at night?

Or, you’ve gone to write an email and 3 hours later realize you’re still surfing the internet, and haven’t written an email yet?

If so, you are familiar with what I call decoys – the things that we do, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid our emotions.

Believe me, I have lots of experience with decoys! And what I can tell you based on that experience is that you’re not using decoys because you’relazy or a failure, or lacking in willpower.

Your’re using them because your brain thinks it is safer to eat sugar, spend hours on social media, or binge watch 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls – than it is to feel emotions. (FYI. It’s not! But your brain doesn’t know that yet.)

Decoys are a survival mechanism.

Our brain learns in different ways (usually during childhood), that our emotions are a threat to our wellbeing, and so it protects us from them.

Many people are familiar with the idea that eating, drinking, smoking, and even over-working can be ways to avoid how their feeling – but most people aren’t aware that a lot of other things they’re doing, including stressful thinking, patterns of perfectionism, and even self-criticism are also decoys.

Here’s a more complete list of the ways our brain protects us from feeling emotions…

Over eating or drinking, or obsessing about your diet

Binge watching anything online (ie. Netflix, Hulu, You-tube, etc.)

Social Media

Over scheduling yourself/ staying constantly busy

Overworking

Using drugs or smoking

Shopping

Worrying

Self-Criticism/Self-Judgement

Perfectionism

Thinking about the past or future (regret and negative predictions)

Obsessing about your symptoms – measuring and tracking them, worrying about them, frantically trying to get rid of them, etc.

You may be wondering if there is anything you do that is not a decoy!

What’s the problem with using decoys?

Aside from the fact that over eating, over working, worry and obsessing are all hard on your body, when you use a decoy, you miss the opportunity to feel an emotion, which over time leads to chronic stress, tension, anxiety and pain. It also disconnects you from your intuition and the inner wisdom that you need to heal your body. If you want to relieve pain, you have to learn how to get past your decoys to feel your emotions.

So, how can you do that?

Here are my 4 steps to successfully letting go of decoys, and accessing the healing power of your emotions!

Step 1: Identify Your Decoys.

Which activities on the list above do you think may be operating as decoys for you? Which ones do you feel compelled to do, or unable to stop? Sometimes these are the things that you may already be struggling to let go of (ie. unhealthy food or exercise choices, excessive worry or time on the internet, etc.).

Step 2: Notice When You’re Using Them

Don’t force yourself to stop using your decoys. Instead, the most effective way to work with them is to notice when you’re using them.

Step 3: Ask “What am I feeling?”

You don’t have to know what you’re feeling yet, but start asking the question. Becoming more aware of the fact that your brain is compelling you to use decoys in order to distract you from emotion, is enough to begin unravelling them.

Step 4: Learn how to feel and process emotions.

This is the power step. When you can welcome your emotions, you won’t need your decoys to protect you from them anymore.

Remember, decoys are a survival mechanism.You’ve probably been using them in one form or another for most of your life, and for good reasons! Go slow. Be curious. As always, patience and self-kindness will go a long way towards creating the sense of safety that will allow your emotions to flow and your body to heal.

If you’d like more support with learning how to let go of decoys and allow your emotions to flow, so you can relieve your pain, the next group session of Healing Female Pain is coming up in August 2017! Get on the VIP list to be notified when registration opens here!

Stress, overwhelm, fear and catastrophic thinking are a part of life, especially when you’re dealing with chronic pelvic pain, or any other chronic symptoms.

Which is why it’s important to have simple and reliable strategies you can use to help you relax and reconnect when you need to.

So, today I’m sharing my personal favorites.

These are tools I use on a regular basis to help me move from stuck and stressed to relaxed and inspired, in one minute or less!

Don’t let their simplicity fool you. These simple techniques, used regularly or as needed, can have a big impact on your overall health and wellbeing.

Use these anytime you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, anxious or depressed – or build them into your day to keep you feeling energized, happy, and inspired.

#1 Put Your Bare Feet on the Earth

This is my personal favorite and I use it often, even in winter. What could be simpler than taking off your shoes, and putting your bare feet on the earth. Studies show countless benefits of “earthing” as this has come to be known, ranging from decreased stress and anxiety to better sleep. But the feeling you’ll have in your body when you do it, is really all you need to know that it’s good for you!

#2 Go Outside

If it’s not practical or possible to go barefoot, the next best thing is to simply go outside. If you can, find a patch of sun. If there are woods, a beach, a mountain, lake or waterfall nearby…even better! But your front porch will do. Simply walk out, stretch your arms in the air, and inhale some fresh air. This can make a surprisingly big difference in your mental state and mood. I do this regularly and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly it can get me out of my head and shift how I feel.

#3 Breathe

Bring your conscious awareness to your breath and the oxygen filling your lungs. If you like you can breathe down into your low belly, or use another breathing technique like alternate nostril breathing or a diaphragmatic breath, but it’s not necessary. Simply getting conscious about your breath, will not only bring more oxygen to your cells, it will bring your awareness into your body and the present moment, and get you out of stressful thoughts looping in your mind.

#4 Dance Break!

Keep some uplifting favorites easily accessible, (mine are in iTunes) and take a dance break! Turn up the music for a minute and move your body any way it wants to move. Music is energy and can quickly shift our energy to a higher frequency. Music is also a great way to move emotional energy so you can get back into the flow.

#5 Write It Down

Stressful thoughts have a way of running on autopilot, and taking over. Getting those thoughts out of your head and onto paper where you can question them, takes their power away. Add to that writing down the opposite thought, and you have a powerful way to get some freedom from worry, self-criticism, and other stressful thoughts. This doesn’t have to take a long time. One minute of working with your thoughts in writing can get you out of a mental loop that’s been going on for hours. For more help with this check out my blog post, Train Your Brain to Relieve Pelvic Pain.

The next time you’re feeling stuck or stressed, take a one minute energy shifting break!

Taking care of yourself in this way, making time to get unstuck when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, can make a big difference in how you feel emotionally, and over time will calm your nervous system and help relieve your pain.

Of course, these simple strategies work best when added to a regular mind body practice that keeps you connected to yourself and your emotions, and shifts underlying stressful mental and emotional patterns that are contributing to pelvic and sexual pain.

If you’d like more guidance and support transforming those underlying patterns and relieving pelvic pain, check out The Healing Female Pain program! In it I’ll walk you through the exact steps I use with my private clients to help them relieve chronic pelvic and sexual pain using a mind body approach.

]]>https://radiantlifedesign.com/one-minute-energy-shifters/feed/04707Boundaries: What they are, and why you need them to relieve pelvic pain.https://radiantlifedesign.com/boundaries-what-they-are-and-why-you-need-them-to-relieve-pelvic-pain/
https://radiantlifedesign.com/boundaries-what-they-are-and-why-you-need-them-to-relieve-pelvic-pain/#commentsFri, 17 Mar 2017 16:45:39 +0000https://radiantlifedesign.com/?p=4682

It started with a disagreement.

For hours, I had been fighting off the urge to call back one more time. I was angry and wanted to be heard and acknowledged. But, I knew from experience that that was not likely to go well.

Despite that, I was having difficulty letting go and moving on.

Have you ever felt like that?

After many years of doing mind body work, I know that when this happens what I need, more than convincing someone else to validate my perspective, is to make space for myself and my emotions.

And to do that, I need a boundary.

What is a boundary?

Your boundary is an energetic container, that when strong, can help you to distinguish between your thoughts, emotions, needs, intuition, and desires…..and everyone else’s. According to Karla McLaren, author of The Language of Emotions, your boundary corresponds to the space around you that your brain recognizes as yours.

The word boundary tends to create confusion. For some it conjures up ideas of pushing people away, or fear of not being liked or accepted.

But boundaries, when healthy, have nothing to do with other people (at least not at first.), they are all about us.

Why you need a healthy boundary.

Well for starters, if you don’t have one and use it, your body is likely to create them for you in the form of chronic pain and illness (including chronic pelvic and sexual pain). But there are even more important benefits of healthy boundaries…all of which decrease internal stress and tension, help you live authentically, align with and live your soul’s purpose, and ultimately relieve pain!

Here are some of the other many benefits of healthy boundaries:

They give you permission to be fully who you are – and like who you are – even when people treat or respond to you in ways that make you temporarily forget that.

Having clear boundaries, allows you to be closer to the people and experiences you want to be close to…and move away from the people and experiences that are not good for you. (And they help you tell the difference.)

Healthy boundaries allow you to speak up and share your truth with clarity and confidence… and without anger, resentment, or an agenda. Which allows people to hear you.

Recognizing, using and honoring your boundaries helps you repair your relationship with yourself. (Boundaries have not only helped me take better care of myself, they’ve helped me reclaim the truth of who I am after years of being told I was selfish and too much.)

Boundaries are magical! When you create, and use them you start to feel free. They are an antidote to feeling stuck, confused, frustrated, angry, and fearful.

How to create healthy boundaries.

Creating a healthy boundary is a process. It involves practice in the form of using your imagination, getting curious, trying things out, and noticing the results.

You begin by imagining that you have a boundary…which helps you become aware of where it should be, how it would feel, and how it could be operating.

Here are the steps…

Imagine a bubble around your body that is about an arm’s length away from your body in every direction, above your head and below your feet, in front of you and behind you.

Next, imagine lighting up the edge of your bubble with a bright color (or if you like imagine setting it in flames).

Recognize that this boundary creates a safe space where you can welcome, feel and accept all of your thoughts and emotions, and all of the sensations in your body, without any of it impacting anyone else – and without anyone else’s thoughts or emotions coming in without your permission.

Breathe and start to get a sense of what it feels like to have this protected space.

As you go through your day imagine your boundary when you need it. This may be before you interact with others, before you make decisions, when you’re feeling emotions, or in my case…after you’ve had a disagreement that you’re having trouble letting go of. Remind yourself that you are allowed to be fully yourself in this protected space – including allowing all the emotions and sensations in your body, without taking on anyone else’s thoughts, emotions, or expectations.

Then get curious about what’s yours and what’s not.

So, for example, when I noticed that urge to pick up the phone for the third time, before I did anything else, I imagined my boundary. This created an energetic separation between me, and everyone and everything else besides me. Creating that separation mentally and energetically helped me to welcome my thoughts and emotions, and give myself space to get clear about what was going on inside.

What I noticed right away was that I was judging myself. Even though consciously I was upset with the other person, and defending myself from their judgments, inside my “lizard thoughts” were “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so selfish?”

I had let it in.

What someone else had said triggered old thought patterns in me, that I already knew weren’t true. That’s why I felt bad. It had nothing to do with them. It had to do with my own crappy thinking about myself.

Once I realized that I asked myself if that was true. And with my boundary in place, it was easy for me to see that it wasn’t. I’m not selfish. I have good intentions, and I’m actually very generous. And when I connected to that truth of who I am, as defined by me, I wasn’t angry anymore. I didn’t feel the need to call back and explain or justify. I no longer needed to defend or change myself. The words I had let in were a reflection of the person who had said them. They had nothing to do with me, and I was no longer letting them in. I felt freedom, clarity, and relief.

The moral of the story

When we feel upset, it is almost never because of what someone else has said or done, it’s because of what we make that mean, how we take it on. The upset comes from old patterns that get triggered and what we unconsciously start to think about ourselves. Changing that internal dialog is what brings emotional relief, clarity, and freedom.

We get to define and be who we truly are are. We get to make choices that feel good to us. We have the power to show up and create our lives as we want them to be.

And healthy boundaries help us do that.

That doesn’t mean we can’t speak up. I speak up all the time.

I just don’t do much justifying and explaining anymore. I get to be who I am, and allow other people to be who they are.

There really is no greater freedom in the world.

If you’re suffering with chronic pelvic or sexual pain (or any other chronic pain, illness, anxiety, or depression), spend some time creating healthy boundaries.

They are a powerful tool for self-understanding, self-love and healing. It’s worth taking the time to create them.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Please share them in the comments below!

I remember the moment I made the decision to stop struggling against my body.

Lying on my bedroom floor feeling frustrated, angry and alone, I realized that there was no way I was going to relieve pelvic pain until I made some kind of peace with where I was.

For far too long I had been frantically searching for solutions. Going from doctor to doctor. Worrying I was never going to enjoy sex again. Angry that no one knew what was going on, and feeling somehow damaged or defective.

I could feel how much stress, tension, and anxiety all of this was causing in my body and my life.

I was 100% focused on what I did not want.

So, I made a decision to do something radical.

I decided to stop.

Seriously.

I decided to make peace with my symptoms and the impact they were having on my life…

With the fact that intercourse with my honey hurt.

With the fact that I couldn’t wear the clothes I wanted to wear, or do the exercise I wanted to do.

With the fact that the intense burning pain almost never went away, and was seriously impacting my ability to enjoy everything in my life, including parenting my amazing daughter, and doing work that for the first time in my life I was excited about.

I made a conscious choice to stop trying to change or fix all of this, and instead allow it to be as it was, just for now. I considered the possibility that my symptoms might be trying to help me, and chose to relate to them as a potential blessing rather than a curse.

It wasn’t easy but I was pretty sure there was no other way out.

And in that moment, though the pain didn’t magically go away, emotionally a weight lifted off my shoulders and my heart. I felt at home inside my own skin again, in a way I hadn’t in months.

Looking back, I can see that this choice is what allowed my body to heal.

And after years of helping hundreds of women relieve every type of chronic pelvic and sexual pain, as well as other chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression and other symptoms, I have come to see that the single most important thing you can do to relieve pain, heal your body, or change anything in your life that isn’t the way you want it to be, is to drop your resistance to it.

Let go.

I promise you. It’s possible.

What you resist persists, and pain is no exception.

When you’re struggling against where you are. When you believe thoughts that your life is over or that you’ll never be able to enjoy your life again, not only do you miss the blessings, guidance, and opportunities where you are, you create a whole lot of stress, tension, and anxiety in your body…things that make it impossible for your body to heal.

Of course accepting where you are isn’t necessarily easy. Especially when you’re in pain, feeling stuck, trapped, and hopeless – and your symptoms are limiting your life in ways that make you feel as though your life is basically over, like you’re missing out.

But it is possible, and it can be as simple as a decision to accept where you are, just for now, and see what happens.

“You are where you are and you can get to wherever you want to go from where you are.” ~Abraham-Hicks

Dropping the struggle and relaxing into where you are relaxes your body and your nervous system, connects you to your inner wisdom, and allows you to find and tune into the guidance you need from your body to heal.

Not only that, it allows you to get your focus off of your symptoms and onto other things…including things you actually still enjoy. Which further relaxes your nervous system, decreases tension and stress, and allows you to feel better emotionally even before the symptoms are gone.

It’s a funny thing about looking for blessings, that when you look for them you start to find them.

In my case, dropping the struggle, and making the choice to let go and make space to see my pain, and the resulting limitations in my life, as a blessing allowed me to start finding new ways to be with my body and find what did feel good again.

For example, I discovered that I actually could enjoy sex and intimacy when I honored my body, communicated with my partner, and made space for creativity and play. As a result, sex got way better and so did my relationship…even before my pain went away.

And, slowing down and honoring my body, making fewer plans and taking time to go inside actually expanded my world rather than contracting it.

Your body is ALWAYS on your side.

Sometimes it’s not immediately apparent how.

It may be that it’s stopping you from doing things the usual way to nudge you onto a different path, to help you expand your possibilities and tap into your full potential.

When you are in “fix it” mode it’s impossible to be open to those nudges.

Here are some things making peace with my symptoms helped me to do…

Understand my body.

Speak up.

Honor my truth.

Put myself first.

Say no.

Create healthy boundaries.

Learn new ways of experiencing pleasure.

Improve communication with my partner, and other people in my life.

And more…

Some of those things were hard for me to do. I never would have done them if my body wasn’t literally demanding the change. I see this over and over again with the women I work with. When they truly drop the struggle, they are amazed at what they discover inside themselves.

Here’s the thing though…You can’t fake this. You really have to do it.

Start with a willingness to make peace with where you are.

“Now is just the jumping off place for the beginning of your journey.” ~Abraham-Hicks

Take a deep breath. Get out your journal. Find a way to make peace with where you are. Whether it’s soothing affirmations, looking for the blessings, trusting life or a higher power, or simply breathing and letting go of control. Spend time finding what it is that helps you genuinely drop the struggle in your body, because it’s the struggle that is keeping you stuck.

PS If you’d like more support with this…make sure to check out The Healing Female Pain program, where we’ll go more in depth into making peace with where you are, and the other tools you need to find freedom and relief!

Especially when you’re in pain or things are happening in your life that you can’t control.

Your mind can easily convince you that you are not safe, or that you’re alone, or unloved, or that you’ll always be in pain.

It’s not true.

What is true is this.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

And from our spirit’s perspective, ALL IS WELL. Always.

I just finished reading the amazing book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander, MD.

Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a near death experience, tells the story of what happened when he was in a coma for 7 days after contracting meningitis. During this time he was met by an angelic being and in addition to some pretty amazing experiences, he received 3 core messages…

“You are loved. You are safe. You can’t do anything wrong.”

He experienced that the foundation of our universe, and others, is love. I highly recommend this book for a neuroscientist’s perspective on life and our existence based on his NDE.

I’ve read other NDE experiences, including another one of my favorites, Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing, by Anita Moorjani, and they ALL include this similar realization that the foundation of everything is love, that we are love, and that all is well, always.

Even when from our human experience it doesn’t appear to be.

It’s our lizard brain, the part of our brain that is solely focused on survival, which prevents us from being connected to this awareness at all times.

But there are ways to stay connected to this truth, even while you’re in a human body. Making it a priority to do that, especially when things in your life seem stressful or scary, is critical for your health and wellbeing…and of course for relieving pain and anxiety.

So, I wanted to share with you some of what I’ve been doing for myself, and some of what’s been working for my clients during a time that has created a lot of fear for many of us, in the hopes that it might help you stay connected to the truth that you are safe and loved, even when you’re in pain, and even when what’s happening in your reality might be convincing you otherwise.

Find Inspiration

Read, watch, or listen to teachers who inspire and remind you of the truth of who you are. And do this OFTEN when things start getting stressful.

One of my favorite ways to stay connected to the knowing that all is well, is with books on tape and other mp3 recordings that I can listen to while I’m cooking, cleaning, driving, walking, etc. The two NDE audio books I included above, are fantastic. I find it very comforting to hear these stories told by the people who experienced them. They help me feel safe, and re-connect to love and possibility when my lizard is running away with frightening predictions.

Another spiritual teacher I listen to regularly for perspective and inspiration is Abraham-Hicks. I love their book, Ask and It is Given, as well as the many videos they have available on you-tube. Lately I’ve also been enjoying, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.

Connect to Your Body, and to the Earth

Your mind may run away with negative predictions and worries, but your body is always grounded in the present moment. Dropping into your body and taking a few low belly breaths, moving, getting some fresh air and sunshine on your face, putting your bare feet on the earth…these are all amazing ways to ground, soothe and nourish yourself, and reconnect to the love and safety that are the truth of who you are. Always.

Repeat Soothing Affirmations

Here are my favorite’s that I’ve relied on over the years…

“In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete.” ~Louise Hay

“Everything is always working out in the best possible way.” ~ Abraham-Hicks

“You can’t get it wrong and you’ll never get it done.” ~Abraham-Hicks

“All of life supports and loves me.”

“I am deeply loved, warmly welcomed, and completely safe.”

“All is well.”

Lead your mind

This one’s important. Your lizard brain is constantly scanning your environment for potential danger, and right now, she may be finding a lot of it! If you do nothing to lead your mind, you’re going to be stuck in a default of fearful thinking and anxiety that is bad for your body and prevents relief.

The truth is that you ARE LOVE. From your soul’s perspective you are completely safe always.

Sometimes when we’re forced into situations that disconnect us from our sense of safety it can be an opportunity to discover that we have the power to get back there, all on our own, without anything else changing. It can motivate us to find where that safety comes from – inside of us.

I encourage you to use anything that might be scaring you right now as an opportunity to practice and find your way home to yourself.

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

You’ve had the power all along.

What do you do to help you stay grounded in love, safety, and possibility? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below!

Whether you’ve been recently diagnosed, or struggling with vulvar pain, painful sex, or other chronic pelvic pain for years, in my experience there are 4 critical keys to finding lasting relief.

Women who implement these strategies relieve their pain much more quickly and easily, and don’t get trapped in the never-ending search for specialists and treatments that so many women with pelvic pain face.

These keys are guiding principles that form the basis of my work with pelvic pain.

It’s what I’ve learned through my personal experience healing vulvar pain, as well as through my coaching work helping women relieve all kinds of chronic pelvic pain.

This nervous system response is meant to be a temporary emergency response to real and present dangers in your environment. It prepares your body to run or fight by releasing stress hormones that increase muscle tension, send blood AWAY from your core (including your urinary digestive, and reproductive tracts), and increase heart rate and blood pressure.

All this is adaptive when it’s temporary, but when you’re worrying about your symptoms or your future, beating yourself up, putting a lot of pressure on yourself, obsessing about treatments or diet or work… all day long, it’s really hard on the body!

Regularly being in a stress response leads to chronically tensed muscles (in your pelvic floor and elsewhere), decreased circulation of oxygen and nutrients to your nerves, tissues, and organs, and an over-stimulated (or sensitized) nervous system.

All this contributes to pain (or creates it) and prevents your body from healing.

I know it feels impossible to change this thinking, especially when there are real things to worry about. I have been there! But I promise you it is possible. It is actually very doable when you have the right tools and strategies to work with.

2. Learn how to feel and process your emotions in healthy ways.

We live in a culture that teaches us how to suppress our emotions from day one. Families, schools, religions, our medical system, the workplace…you name it. They are all set up in ways that reward us for suppressing emotion…or punish and shame us for showing emotion.

As a result we learn unhealthy strategies for dealing with our emotions. For instance, we unconsciously tense and contract muscles and hold our breath to stop emotional energy from moving in our body. On top of that we keep ourselves distracted with activities like obsessing over our To Do lists, binge watching Netflix, surfing the internet, and overeating – all to help us avoid being present with emotions in our body.

Unfortunately all the ways we suppress emotion, consciously and unconsciously, are hard on the body! They lead to chronic tension and contraction, an over stimulated nervous system, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

Learning how to process your emotions in healthy ways, allows your body to relax. You’ll notice you can take a full, deep breath, relax muscles that have previously felt impossible to relax (or like steel as some of my clients describe). This not only relieves pain, anxiety and fatigue (holding back emotional energy is exhausting), but also gives you access to your intuition and body’s wisdom.

3. Trust Yourself and Trust Your Body

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” ~ C.S. Lewis

As a soul with a body, you have a lot more wisdom available to you than you are aware of. Your body and soul constantly give you guidance about what is right for you. No one else outside of you has access to that information. You know your truth.

It’s important to learn how to understand and trust this information in all aspects of your life, but especially when it comes to healing your body.

When you learn how to understand what your body is communicating and trust it, you will be able to lead your treatment and make difficult decisions with confidence. This is particularly important when it comes to pelvic pain or other health issues that leave you navigating a sea of potential treatments, and wide range of skill, training and experience among providers.

I have had so many clients who ignored what felt right to them and regretted it later. Don’t let that happen to you. Don’t over ride yourself. Learn how to trust and honor yourself and the wisdom your body is giving you now.

4. Make yourself and your healing a priority

You cannot give from an empty well, and at the same time relieve pain. Period.

But, I know that if you’re in chronic pain you may already have lots of thoughts and guilt about not doing enough – not working enough, not giving enough, not participating enough.

Many of the women I work with need to learn how to let go of patterns of over doing, and taking care of everyone else except themselves in order to relieve their pain. These patterns not only perpetuate pain, in many cases they caused it in the first place. There is no possible way to push yourself physically and emotionally, meeting everyone else’s needs except your own, and relieve pain. You can’t ignore yourself and your body for an extended period of time without physical consequences.

And you certainly can’t do that and heal a body that’s already in pain!

This as an opportunity to learn what true self-care is. Have you heard of the oxygen mask rule? In the event of an emergency, when the oxygen masks come down, mom gets oxygen first. Why? If she doesn’t nobody makes it

This is not selfish it is survival. You can’t take good care of anyone else if you’re not taking good care of you.

You will have so much more time for everyone else, when you feel better. Right now, you deserve the time you need heal.

Bottom line: If you want to find lasting relief from chronic pelvic pain, you need a different approach. One that includes looking at your thoughts and emotions, your past experiences, and how you’re treating yourself on a regular basis – and ultimately teaches you how to make the changes in yourself and in your life that will relieve tension, calm down your nervous system, increase blood flow, and relieve your pain.

If you’d like more support, The Healing Female Pain Program, walks you step by step through the process of relieving chronic pelvic and sexual pain using a mind body approach.

Have you ever struggled making decisions about whether or not to use a particular treatment to help relieve your pain?

My clients ask me all the time whether or not they should use a certain supplement, diet, or medical treatment to help them relieve pelvic pain.

My answer is always the same.

I can’t tell them whether they should take a certain herb or vitamin, follow a specific diet, go for PT, or explore any other treatment. What I can do is help them find that answer inside themselves. And in my experience, that is the only way to find what will be effective for you.

There is not one effective way to relieve pelvic pain.

No expert, myself included, can make a good decision for you about what is right for your body without your input.

Not your doctor

Not a therapist or psychiatrist

Not a PT

Not a nutritionist

Not an acupuncturist

Not a mind body coach!

The most important information about what is right for you, and how to integrate the different methods of healing successfully for your body…has to come from YOU – and more specifically from your body.

If something doesn’t feel right for you, no matter what an expert says, or how good it sounds, it very likely isn’t!

On the other hand, if it does feel right, it probably is!

And that is different for every single woman.

YOU are the expert on YOU.

I can’t tell you how many women I’ve worked with who have been injured by or gotten worse from treatments that they tell me they KNEW all along were not right for them. But they did them anyway, and sometimes continued doing them for long periods of time, against their own instincts, because they were afraid to speak up or question an expert, or because they “trusted” their provider over themselves, or they just didn’t know what else to do.

Which makes sense because as women, we’ve been trained out of honoring the wisdom inside ourselves – our instincts and our gut feelings. And, when it comes to health, we’ve all been taught that the experts know better than we do.

They don’t.

The truth is, no matter how much experience or knowledge an expert has, no matter what their success rate or how good their recommendations seem to be…

It’s important to check in with your gut.

You have to factor in the information your body is giving you if you want to relieve your pain.

Most women have a sense of what’s right for them when they pay attention to their body. They may not trust it right away, but the more they ask, the clearer the answers get.

Right now, if you’re overwhelmed or struggling with any decisions, about treatments or anything else, tune into your body to get a sense of what it’s telling you.

What happens in your body when you consider different options? Does it feel open and relaxed? Do you get a slight feeling of excitement or peace? Or, does your body tense up or feel heavy?

Your gut feelings matter.

They not only matter, they are critically important.

Yesterday on a group coaching call for the Healing Female Pain program, one of the women asked about taking a certain supplement that had been recommended to her. She had a long list of reasons why her mind and other people thought this would be a good idea. But she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do and asked for my help.

I had her close her eyes, breathe into her low belly, tune into her body and then bring the supplement in question into her awareness, or imagine taking it. Then I asked her to scan her body.

What she noticed when she did was that her throat tensed up and her chest felt heavy. Her body was clearly saying, “NO. This is not the right time to take this.”

It struck me that I could tell in her voice from the minute she asked me, that she didn’t think it was a good idea. But, it sounded good, and other people thought she should do it. So she was doubting herself, to the point that she didn’t know she already knew. Just like we’ve all been trained to do.

Based on years of doing this work for myself and with clients, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that if you use a supplement or treatment that your body is saying no to, it will take you off course. It won’t help your body heal. It may even do harm. You may need to test that out.

And that’s fine. This is a learning process. The important thing is that you ask. Check in with your body and get clear about its opinion. You can still make whichever choice you’d like to, and you will learn from the experience.

Start asking your body.

You don’t have to trust your body right away. You can wait until you gather enough evidence that your body actually knows what it’s talking about.

Is your body saying yes or no?

What happens when you listen to your body?

What happens when you don’t?

There are so many options – so many practitioners, modalities, and treatments to choose from to treat pelvic pain that if you’re not tuned into your body, if you’re not checking in to see what feels like a YES to you and what is a NO, it’s really easy to get confused and off course.

And then frustrated and hopeless when nothing is working!

When you discover that you can trust your body, things get really clear really fast.

Over time, you will KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt what your body is telling you. And you will also know that listening is the only option if you want to heal, stay on your soul’s path, and live a joyful life.

One thing I’ve learned after years of helping women do this is that your body never lies. She is absolutely your best friend and guide, not only in relieving your pain….but in every other area of your life.

If you start trusting her, if you start trusting yourself over what everyone else is telling you, you may be amazed at how quickly things start working, and how good your body is at healing.

You life (and making decisions) will get much much easier.

Remember, if it doesn’t “feel” right to you it probably ISN’T, and if it does, it probably IS!

Simple but powerful wisdom to live by, especially when you’re navigating a path to pelvic pain relief.